Unfinished Muse (5 page)

I patted the flowerpot under my arm. “Well,
Phyllis. We might as well find out what she’s doing today. Brace
yourself.”

“I’m sure she’s lovely,” Phyllis said.

“Uh huh.” I lifted my chin, bracing for the
worst, then opened the unlocked front door and stepped inside.

No matter how much I prepared myself for
what my mother might be doing, I was never fully ready.

The light in the living room was so bright I
had to squint until my eyes grew accustomed to it. The overhead
light was on, and every surface held a table lamp with the
brightest possible bulbs screwed into them.

Mom was in the dead center of the room on
her elbows and knees, nose nearly pressed into the carpet. Her lips
moved, and she whispered something I couldn’t hear. I waited for
her to pause, not wanting to interrupt whatever the hell was going
on.

I honestly couldn’t even make a guess.

After a few minutes, she inched forward a
bit, then sat up, stretching her neck. I pressed my lips together
hard to keep from laughing.

Mom blinked at me through the thickest
lenses I’d ever seen. Her eyes appeared to be three times the size
of her head. “Wynter. When did you get here?”

“A few minutes ago.” I stepped away from the
wall I’d been leaning against. “Whatcha doin’?” I tried to keep my
voice light and curious instead of loud and demanding.

Everyone who met my mom thought she was
adorable and eccentric. Try living with her for twenty-four years.
Exhausting was a more fitting description after that long.

Mom blinked her enormous eyes again and
showed me the tweezers she held in her right hand. “I’m re-tufting
the carpet. What else would I be doing?”

What else, indeed.

I squinted at the white shag carpet behind
her and didn’t see any difference. “Looks great. You must’ve been
working at it for a long time.”

She wiped her brow with the back of her
hand. “I guess. What time is it?”

I glanced at the clock over the fireplace.
“Four thirty. I got out of work early.”

“That’s nice. How are things at the bank?
Did you get that promotion I told you to go for?” She pushed
herself up from the floor, looking a little wobbly.

I shook my head. “I left the bank months ago
to work at that call center. Remember?”

She stretched her arms in the air, then
swung them side to side. “Okay. So how’s the call center
going?”

“I hated it and quit last week.” My stomach
knotted at the look on her face. Here she was crawling around on
the floor with binocular glasses and a pair of tweezers fluffing
her carpet one tuft at a time. B. But I was the one who was the
disappointment.

She took her ridiculous glasses off and set
them on a side table with the tweezers. “Oh, Wynter.” She sighed
and perched on the edge of the sofa. “I didn’t change anything in
your room. You can move back in anytime. But honestly, you’ve got
to find something that makes you happy. Something you can stick
to.”

I held Phyllis close against my body and
looked at my feet. “I found a new job already.”

“Oh?” She didn’t look up at me while she
busied herself with the very serious business of spreading her
magazines across the coffee table in a perfect fan. “What are you
doing now?”

Should I tell her about my impossible new
employer? What about the talking plant? Did she know about all that
stuff? Surely she would have told me by now if she did.

“I started training at an employment agency
yesterday.”

That made her look up, and I watched her
face for any signs she knew what I was talking about.

She frowned. “A temp agency isn’t a
dependable source of income, Wynter. What if the work dries up?
What if they have nothing for you?”

“It’s not like that, Mom. It’s more like
I’ll be working for the agency. It’s not temporary.”

Mom gave me a long look, then shrugged. “You
know best, I guess. I’ll keep your room waiting, just in case.”

“Thanks.” My voice was quiet. She didn’t
mean to hurt my feelings, but she had. Hard to believe in yourself
if even your mom expects you to fail.

I set Phyllis on a table and sat in the
stiff, pink satin chair in the opposite corner of the room from
where Mom sat.

She straightened the lace doily on the arm
of the sofa. “Well, I hope you enjoy the new job. How’s
Freddy?”

I froze.

I shouldn’t have come. Screw it. I’ll grab
my talking plant and leave. Maybe Mom will forget I was ever
here.

In the end, I decided to ignore the question
and pose one of my own, instead. “Mom, who’s my dad?”

She tilted her head at me, a mild look on
her face. “What an odd question, out of the blue like that. I’ve
told you about him before.”

Sure she had. And every damn time he was
somebody different.

“It was a security clearance question on my
job application,” I said.

“Oh.” She smiled and smoothed her yoga pants
over her long, dancer legs. “Well, you know. He was a fireman named
Vince. Vince Clothos. He died a hero, you know. Ran into a burning
hospital and rescued twenty-three people—fourteen of them
children—before finally succumbing to the flames.” She sighed for
dramatic effect, a faraway look on her face. “He had beautiful
eyes. Green. Like yours.”

“Mom, my eyes are blue.”

She didn’t alter her nostalgic expression.
“Blue. Like yours.”

Nope. Today was not the day I would get the
true story of my conception. What I did know for sure, thanks to my
new job, was that he was a Greek god—or at least a descendent. But
had she known? She must have, raising me on Greek stories like she
had. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.

Could it?

I moved to the couch and took one of her
hands in mine. “Mom, was there anything…special about him?”

She smiled. “Of course. He was very
special.”

“No, I don’t mean like that. I mean, did he
have any special, uh, skills? Could he do anything you wouldn’t
expect a person to be able to do?”

She blushed all the way to her blonde roots.
“Nothing I think we should talk about.”

That was so not what I meant. I gave up.
Maybe next time she’d slip up and give me something useful about my
father. If he was only a descendent of a god and not the god
himself, maybe he didn’t know anything about his lineage either. I
sure hadn’t.

I let go of her hand and tucked mine between
my knees. “So. What made you decide to freshen up the carpet?”

“Oh, it was about time, is all. They say you
should really do it once every three years, at the very least.”

What the hell kind of magazines is she
reading?
I glanced at the array of periodicals on the coffee
table.
Better Homes and Gardens
probably advised a good
steaming, but not the crazy operation she had going.

Phyllis was silent through all of this. I
picked her up and held her in my lap. She didn’t move, but her
presence eased some of the tension I was feeling.

Mom didn’t seem to think it was odd for me
to be toting a houseplant around. Maybe she figured I was picking
up some of her eccentricity.

“Mom, do you believe in magic?”

She gave me an odd look. “I believe in the
magic of love. And the way my flowers bloom every spring. A baby’s
laugh. Is that what you mean?”

I scrunched my face in thought. “Not
exactly. Like, magical creatures. The ability to fly. That sort of
thing.”

Her expression looked worried. “Are you
feeling well, Wynter? You’re not coming down with something, are
you? It’s too soon to call in sick at a new job.” She rose from the
couch, hands fluttering. “Let me get you some Echinacea. I’ll juice
you a pineapple and some ginger.”

“No. Mom. I’m fine.” I tried to grab her as
she brushed past me, but I missed. Shrugging, I got up and followed
her into the kitchen. If Mom felt like I needed an immunity boost,
she wasn’t going to stop until vitamin C leaked out my ears.

I watched as she chopped the top and bottom
off a pineapple, then cut away the skin and cored it before slicing
it into spears. She rinsed a considerable chunk of ginger in the
sink, as well as a pear, which she cut into quarters. Her hands
worked in precise movements as she peeled a lime, then fed
everything into a very loud juicer. Within a minute, she handed me
a frothy glass of juice with so much fresh ginger in it, my mouth
and throat burned when I took a sip.

I grimaced and my voice was strained.
“Thanks.”

She rattled around in a cupboard, opening
bottles and jars, then handed me a handful of pills. “Take
these.”

There was no use arguing. It wasn’t as if
she was handing me a bunch of drugs. Mom was strictly a home-remedy
girl. And with all the stress in my life, my immune system could
probably have used the boost anyway. I tossed the pills to the back
of my throat and sucked the spicy juice through a straw to help me
swallow.

They didn’t go down easily, but they went
down. Having lived with Mom most of my life, I’d learned to swallow
a lot of difficult things—supplements, cooked dishes I couldn’t
identify, and raw, squiggly things best left unnamed.

My stomach was like iron.

We returned to the living room, and Mom had
me sit on the couch while she returned to crawling around on the
floor with crazy-thick glasses and a pair of tweezers. I watched
her for a while, sipping my juice and wondering how I managed to
grow up as normal as I did.

I glanced at the silent philodendron I’d
brought with me like a security blanket. Maybe I wasn’t so normal
after all.

I cleared my throat. “Mom. Do you remember
when I got this plant?”

She lifted her nose out of the carpet fibers
and blinked at me with her magnified eyes. She flicked her strange
gaze at Phyllis and back to me. “No.” She returned to tugging and
twisting the thread she’d captured between her tweezers.

“Sure you do. Some lady came out of nowhere
and gave it to me at the farmers market a couple years back. Then
she vanished into the crowd. I told you about it.”

Mom shrugged and spoke into the floor.
“Maybe you did. I don’t remember everything you tell me,
Wynter.”

No, that was true. Mom was more forgetful
every year, it seemed. “Could you take a look at her—it—please?
You’re better with plants than I am, and I’m worried she’s—it’s—not
getting everything it needs. Does she need more sunlight? More
water?”

Mom made an annoyed sound and lifted her
head. “It looks fine. Nice and green. Bushy. No dry tips. You’re
doing fine.”

I swallowed my irritation. “Could you just
look
?”

Grunting, she picked herself up from the
floor and moved to the table that held my currently silent plant.
Mom didn’t remove her ridiculous glasses while she examined Phyllis
in depth, touching leaves and prodding soil.

She frowned. “Well, that’s odd.”

My heart rate sped up. “What? What did you
find?” I bit my lip, waiting for her to tell me my plant had a
pulse or there were tiny feet and hands growing underneath the
leaves. Something—anything—weird.

“Is this the pot it came in two years ago?”
She held it in the air and peered at the bottom.

“Yeah. Why?”

“You’ve had it for two years in this same
pot, and it never occurred to you to give it more room? The root
system is so cramped, it’s poking through the drainage holes on the
bottom. You should be ashamed of yourself. I taught you better than
that. I have no idea how this plant is even alive.”

I felt terrible. I did know better, too. But
for some reason, I’d never thought to transplant Phyllis. “Guess I
got busy and didn’t think about it.”

Mom scowled at me. “You stay here. I’ll be
right back.” She left the room, cradling Phyllis and murmuring to
her. The back door opened and closed, letting me know Mom had gone
out to her greenhouse.

I sipped my drink, consumed with guilt and
wondering why Phyllis hadn’t told me she needed more room.

Ten minutes later, Mom came back in the
house with Phyllis seated in a much larger, much gaudier pot. Mom’s
fingers were dark with potting soil, and she smelled like fresh
dirt and things that grow.

She handed Phyllis to me. “I gave her some
fertilizer, too. See those pale leaves coming in? She needed
nutrients. Still, you’re doing a pretty good job.” She patted my
arm and smiled. “Keep it up.”

I pulled the plant close to my chest.
“Thanks for sorting her out for me.” I kissed Mom’s cheek. “Guess
I’d better go home, since I’ve got work in the morning.”

Mom walked out the front door with me, then
stopped. She squinted at me, her expression vague. “How are things
at the bank? Did you get the promotion?”

My heart sank. “No, Mom. I changed jobs.
I’ll come back soon and tell you all about it.” I gave her a
one-armed hug.

She frowned. “That’s a shame. Your father
was a banker. His name was John. John McClane. He’d have loved it
if you’d followed in his footsteps.” She shrugged. “Well, drive,
safely!”

She turned and disappeared into the
house.

I frowned at the yard gnome frozen next to
me. “Look after her for me, Frank.”

Mom was getting worse.

Chapter 5

Physical assessment didn’t begin to touch what they
put us through on Wednesday. We hiked the side of a mockup of the
real Mount Olympus. We stood in a long line for the opportunity to
push a foam boulder up a tall hill like the punishment of Sisyphus.
We ran around a gym passing a flaming torch back and forth. So
stupid. And the muscles in my ass were on fire after that boulder
thing. It was heavier than it looked.

At least they gave us gym clothes and access
to showers. Sensible or not, my heels were not built for extreme
sports.

No matter how difficult it was, I kept my
thoughts focused on the task, not on my aching muscles and pounding
heart rate. Mrs. Moros was our testing instructor for the day, and
I didn’t want her yelling at me for thinking about how much it
hurt. As Moros said several time to other students who weren’t
nearly as focused as I was trying to be, control your thoughts,
control your life.